


Unrest, Upheaval, and Chaos

by BetanSurvey (Scedasticity)



Series: Mere Anarchy [4]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Not comics compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/BetanSurvey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of Post-Collapse Nebari Prime</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unrest, Upheaval, and Chaos

> The exact distinction between "the Collapse" itself and the aftermath of the Collapse is still a matter of some dispute among scholars.  Certainly the Collapse included the sabotaged Transmission and its immediate aftereffects; it is also usually acknowledged that the data worm which tore through the planet's computer network, destroying almost everything, was another important aspect of the Collapse.  One possible definition is that the Collapse was still in progress until the majority of the zumbies -- the most severely afflicted Nebari -- had died.  Other scholars say the Collapse was complete when the voices of Establishment authority fell silent.

 ##### 

**Fifteen solar days since whatever-the-frell happened, thirteen since we went to ground in the gleben, twelve since the computers all frelled themselves, ten since a patrol ship crashed and exploded a few metras away, and still no sign of anyone out here but us and the stock.  I guess it's why we chose this place -- it's remote.  Trouble is when the computers died, all the automated agriculture stuff died, too, and the non-automated -- non-computer, hah, they were pretty automated -- agriculture people have vanished.  We're trying to keep the glebe control center operational, but we don't know dren about farming.  We did learn the hard way that we weren't handling the degrols right.  Half the frelling things broke out of their corral and took off across the gleben, leaving trails of bare ground where they've eaten all the vegetation.  I think they maybe should have been slaughtered already.  So we're eating a lot of charred degrol, and trying to figure out if we should do anything about the crops.  Now I remember why I hate farming.**  

##### 

_Scorpius, another update.  There have been no blinding revelations, but the little things about the situation continue to be very odd.  For one, I would still like to know why anyone thought it was a good idea to destroy a dam and put half the city -- they call them "urban areas" -- under one point five motras of water.  (The Hynerians are being quite smug.)  Since there are no known instances of afflicted Nebari using explosives, I have to conclude it was either the Establishment or the Resistance.  I don't know what they were hoping to accomplish.  All it's done is annoy people._  

_My office is fixed up as much as it's going to be without central power to the building or another, very large generator.  One has to be careful using any computer here, and the doors are all stuck open, but the arrangement works well enough.  I have had a lot of assistance from unaffected Nebari.  I am still astonished at how readily they attach themselves to people who are essentially *occupying their planet*.  Even the ones who saw the Transmission and weren't affected seem desperate for someone to tell them what to do._  

_Biasi, the Nebari "social analyst" I've acquired, is trying to compile a list of people who are definitely alive and a list of people who are definitely dead.  Without access to any pre-Collapse computer records -- presumed destroyed by the computer worm -- I doubt he's ever going to get a truly exhaustive list.  The Eleemosynaries have datacorders full of genetic samples they can't use to put a name to any of the bodies, because they have nothing to compare the samples to.  Naturally that hasn't stopped the Nebari here from hanging on Biasi's every update, hoping to find good news.  Or any news._  

_I'm pleased to report that the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans are still keeping their distances from the heart of Nebari space.  (How serious are they about partition of the outlying territories?)  However, so far as I can tell, absolutely no one else is keeping their distance.  We have everything from Zenetans to Interions, and a few little groups I'd never heard of before.  It's insane.  I'm expecting a colonization party from Khurtanen any day now..._  

##### 

**Morale is middling.  By which I mean that the people who didn't leave anyone behind are very happy not to be looking over their shoulders for the Establishment every arn of every day, and the people who did leave someone behind are really depressed.  The worst one is Ruber.  What he found in his apartment...  Um.  It was bad.  So it's not real surprising I can barely manage to get him to do anything now.  The only good part of this is that unlike certain other cell leaders present, he hasn't done anything to challenge my authority.  I swear if Vieri calls me "child" one more time I'm going to pitch him in the manure pit.  Between him and Amata ever-so-politely questioning my every decision, it's a wonder anything's got done.  So *my* morale is not very good, and it doesn't help that the wound where that maniac tried to chew off my arm *still hurts*.  I got it all bandaged and everything.  Shouldn't it have healed by now?**  

##### 

Zhaan winced as a fresh trickle of blue blood started, but kept tugging at the bandage all the same.  She'd already uncovered some nasty, inflamed gashes, but the worst was still covered up.  //If it doesn't come loose soon, I may have to soak it off.//  The fabric looked like it had once been someone's dull gray undershirt, but now it was clotted blue-black with dried Nebari blood, and very, very stuck to the wound.  //Come on... come on...// 

Finally, she got the bandage off, and promptly had to swallow an exclamation of dismay.  It wasn't just a bite as in toothmarks -- someone had taken a good chunk out of the calf muscle.  //Damn zombies!//  She *knew* they were victims, too, and Tash and Dr. Entellias were *still* hoping to treat them, somehow, but it was hard to remember that when dealing with messes like *this*. 

"All right," she said, hoping her voice was steady.  "I'm going to need to clean this so I can check it thoroughly.  Can you hold still for me a bit longer?" 

The child watched her with large eyes, but didn't say anything.  Zee wasn't sure whether to be grateful he wasn't screaming in pain or to wish he would say *something*.  He was old enough to protest this sort of mishandling.  *Loudly*, from what she remembered of her father tending her little sister's scraped knees.  She sighed and addressed the woman holding him.  "I don't want to give him an analgesic until I've tried to assess the nerve damage.  Is he going to be all right...?"  //Stupid question, Zee.// 

The woman looked back at her helplessly.  "I don't -- I've been giving him smoothers, since it happened.  We had to keep the children quiet, to hide, and -- he was in so much pain..." 

"Right."  Smoothers were a "mild" sedative which could apparently be administered by anyone.  Zhaan was beginning to get the impression that at any given time, a tenth of the adults and half the children on Nebari Prime were on smoothers.  //Budget mind-cleansing.//  But now for *wound*-cleansing. 

It didn't take long to see this was a nasty one.  //Frell, someone bit out a chunk.  That can't be anything but bad.//  There was severe inflammation, and it was pretty hot to the touch, and she thought there was necrotic tissue.  //Frell, dren, *shit*, I'm going to have to trim that.//  And either the kid had lost all feeling in his leg, or smoothers made it impossible to assess nerve damage.  "Can I get a lavage kit over here?" she asked.  Yes, that was good and knowing-what-she-was-doing-like.  Better yet, the Fahrbot Orderly -- //Tacer, his name is Tacer// -- was by to drop off a lavage bag almost at once.  Alexiteric, sealant, and surgical scissors she already had. 

"I need someone to hold the bag up so it will drip down and irrigate the wound," Zhaan told the Nebari woman.  "Can you do that?" 

"I -- yes, I think so."  She took the bag and held it at about head height, over the injured leg.  "What are you going to do?" 

"First I need to address the necrotic tissue, then clean the wound, and pack it up.  This is going to hurt some more."  The child just stared at her, and she wondered about the long-term effects of lots of smoothers.  Something to bring up to Tash or Dr. Entellias. 

The kid remained alarmingly well-behaved as she snipped off bits of dead flesh, not even flinching, though the lavage bag kept shaking a bit.  He stayed impassive while she liberally coated his entire leg in broka-seed alexiteric, which would hopefully knock out the infection already there and prevent any more from developing.  She held off on the sealant, instead just waving off the lavage and packing and rebandaging the wound. 

Zhaan sat back on her heels.  "There.  He ought to be all right.  //Meaning he should live, and I think he'll keep the leg -- but I don't know if he'll ever be able to walk normally.//  She wanted to push back her hair, but her gloves were disgusting.  "Are you his mother?" 

"I -- no, a neighbor.  I had to... had to get him away from his mother." 

"Oh."  Well, that might be enough right there to make the poor kid unresponsive.  "Well, tell whoever's taking care of him to keep him warm, fed, hydrated, and clean, and monitor for fever." 

"I will." 

Zhaan pushed herself wearily to her feet, stripped off the gloves, and looked around.  There was still a line of people awaiting treatment, maybe about twenty-five.  She'd guess twenty or so had already come through.  This urban center was a lot smaller than the one where they'd set up their primary camp, but surely there should be more than forty-five unaffected survivors. 

Not, of course, that they knew how many people *should* be in any of the urban centers, thanks to the computers. 

##### 

**Everyone said Rossi was a computer expert.  But he still can't get the computers to do *anything*.  Not only can we not access anything off them, but anything new you put on disappears immediately.  Among other things, this means we can't use the comm channels, because the computer promptly eats all the data on what you want to pick up or where you're sending to, and on top of that eats your message.  Rossi claims it's not the computer here that's the problem -- that there's something wrong with the whole network, spreading from computer to computer so even if he fixed it, it would get frelled again immediately.  Like a disease? I asked.  He said yes, at least sort of.  I guess it's fitting for the Establishment's computers to be taken out by a "Contagion".  Very cute.  Now can they start working again, please?  At this rate the only way I'll be able to contact Nerri is by sending someone with a note!  He'll be worried sick about me.**  

##### 

> One of the most striking aspects of the Collapse is the near-total breakdown in communication.  Obviously, a key factor was the loss of computerized Nebari comms.  This was, however, not the *only* cause.  In the initial chaos of the Collapse, urban areas -- full of millions of zumbies and regressed -- were extremely dangerous.  While some unaffected Nebari stuck it out in the urban areas, most of those who could fled to the gleben or undeveloped regions.  This inevitably led to small pockets of isolated survivors, ignorant of occurrences elsewhere on the planet or in Nebari space.  It is estimated that around twenty percent of these survivor clusters eventually sent one or more people back to urban centers to see what was happening, or simply returned en masse.  The remainder lacked either the initiative or the courage (hardly surprising, given the Establishments attitudes towards independent action), and stayed where they were until someone found them.  Sometimes this went well; sometimes it didn't.

 ##### 

_Interesting:  I was just informed today that the Constabulary, civil law enforcement, "mostly zombied".  One can only conclude that they were especially susceptible to the Transmission, which according to the only theory we have means they were particularly likely to not think about what they are told.  It strikes me as odd -- I would have thought that at least some of the higher-ranked Constabulary would be adequately highly placed in the Establishment to do some of the manipulating, rather than simply being manipulated._  

_Discussing the Constabulary also brought up the previously-unknown fact that the "zombies" -- and the Constabulary in particular --  started out firing their weapons, but then shifted to using them as clubs regardless of how much ammunition they had left, and eventually moved to teeth and nails like most of the "zombies".  No one mentioned this to me earlier because I hadn't asked._  

_Then I mentioned that we needed to establish a provisional Constabulary to keep what order there is.  My Nebari aide looked at me blankly and said the people suited to being in the Constabulary had been in it, and were gone now.  The rest of them were suited for other things, they'd all been tested.  This from a factory worker who appointed herself my aide.  I could really get to hate Nebari Prime.  There's more pride and independent thought in your average Banik slave pit._  

#####

  **The worst part is the not knowing.  There might have been other unaffected people, but we were in too much of a hurry to look.  Some of them might be alive, but unless they happen to come here -- and since this is a*degrol glebe*, I don't know why they'd *want* to -- we're not going to know anytime soon.  So it should be a relief that we saw a low-flying ship.  Some people *are* relieved -- Rossi is soooo happy we aren't the only living people on the planet.  *Vieri* is afraid it's the Establishment, looking for us.  So far I haven't told either of them I'm pretty sure it was a *Luxan* ship.  Whatever the frell it's doing here.**  

##### 

One positive thing about the Nebari aid mission compared to other missions Tash had been on was that almost all needed medical supplies (species-specific, at that!) could be easily scavenged.  (Well, as easily as anything could get done in a half-flooded city.)  It would have been even more convenient if they could send their new Nebari volunteers -- mostly former patients and friends and relatives of current patients -- out to do the scavenging, but Tash wanted to avoid straining them when it wasn't necessary.  There were plenty of Baniks in the group, and former slaves tended to have few qualms about stealing from the dead. 

Tash closed the crate and smiled wryly at Kobak.  "Wonderful.  We'll get this to the active ward, and--" 

Running feet.  "Is Tash down here?  Never mind, there she is."  Tash turned in time to see Heliotaney, their currently underworked computer specialist, skid to a halt at the top of the stairs.  "Tash?  Sikozu Shanu is on the comm again." 

"Of course she is," Tash sighed.  "Did you bring the mobile?"  Comms had become somewhat problematic, as any inadequately secure device would be rendered useless by the Nebari computer worm, so the "mobile" that Heliotaney handed over was rather large and unwieldy.  Tash activated it.  "Yes?"

"Tash," Sikozu said, her voice crackling from the mobile.  "I have a question about the, ah, pack Nebari." 

"Well, we're still working on evaluating them," Tash said, wondering what sort of question it was. 

"I know, I know, but your people have been observing a lot of them, yes?" 

"Yes..."

"Have you seen any of them throwing rocks?  Or pieces of rubble?" 

"Throwing things?" Tash echoed.  She looked over at Kobak, who'd done a lot more pack-observing.  "I don't want to say it's never happened, but, um... I can't think of any instances." 

"What about when they're being territorial?" 

Kobak shook his head.  "Yelling, waving things, banging on walls, or else charging in and hitting or tackling.  Throwing things isn't the norm.  As much as there is a norm, anyway, which isn't much..." 

"Why do you ask?" Tash put in. 

There was a pause on the other end of the comm.  "An Illonic scouting party was pelted with chunks of cement, and driven out of a particular neighborhood," Sikozu said at last.  "They seem to have assumed it was 'pack' Nebari." 

"Oh." 

"Yes." 

##### 

> Responses to the Transmission ought properly be expressed as a continuum, but there are three useful categories.  The *unaffected* are often lumped in with those Nebari who didn't see the Transmission at all.  How accurate it is to call them "unaffected" cannot be determined, due to many confounding factors, but the unaffected suffered, at least, no cognitive changes.  They remained verbal and did not forget how to perform basic life tasks.  Emotional damage cannot be ruled out, but it was inside the range of emotional upheaval induced simply by being present during the Collapse, so it also cannot be verified.  The *zumbies* (a term of unknown etymology believed to have originated among the Eleemosynaries) were the most severely afflicted.  They lost cognitive abilities, any semblance of impulse control, and, evidently, most of their memories.  The zumbies lost almost all capacity to work together, although they sometimes ran in mobs.  Eventually, they stopped using tools.  They had very poor, if any, survival instincts, and were mostly dead by the end of fifteen solar days.  The intermediate category is the *regressed*, or "pack" Nebari -- the older term was derived from the fact that the most visible regressed victims were those who banded together in animal-like "packs" for mutual survival.  The term was never completely accurate; many regressed Nebari were on their own, or in very small groups.  In addition to having a survival instinct and retaining the ability of nonlinguistic communication, regressed were also distinguished from zumbies by the fact that they identified other people as *theirs*, and would protect them without asking or receiving anything in return -- most commonly, of course, parents protecting children. 

##### 

**Frell, if people can't control their narls, they shoudn't've brought them.  All right, so they couldn't leave 'em in the urban center, they'd have been eaten for lunch -- maybe literally.  But they're still not in the Resistance cells, and they're not my job.  It is in no way my fault that the stupid kid got into the degrol breeding pens.  The brat is just damn lucky Palma was close enough to hear him scream, and good enough to get him out of there when the idiot degrols weren't scared off by pulse fire.  Stupid beasts.  I'm starting to hate degrols.  As pinged off as I am at the parents, though, I gotta feel a little sorry for the narl.  I mean, I freaked the first time I saw breeding degrols, and I must've been twice his age.**  

##### 

Heliotaney grabbed a serving of food cubes and a bottle of water, then turned and stopped.  Zhaan couldn't blame her, given that she was being intently regarded by Renyr, Tacer, Zhaan herself, and five other interns, orderlies, and students.  "Uh... hello?" 

"What's Tash up to?" Renyr asked. 

"Um, hello to you, too.  And why would I know?" 

"Because you're babysitting the comm?" Zhaan suggested.  "You must at least know what Sikozu keeps calling about." 

The Interion rolled her eyes.  "I think if Tash wanted everyone to know what the comms were about, she would have made an announcement." 

"But she didn't tell you *not* to tell anyone," pointed out Nach (on track to be a fully trained Banik doctor in under two cycles).  "Did she?" 

"Well, not exactly..." 

"So what's got Sikozu's hair in a twist?" 

Heliotaney flung her hands in the air.  "Have you lot been lying in wait for me all day?" 

"Well, sort of..."

"Not exactly..." Zhaan murmured, a deliberate echo. 

"We're having a lunch break, too, we're not *just* lying in wait for you," Tacer said brightly. 

"You're a menace," Heliotaney retorted. 

"Is there any reason *not* to tell us?" Zhaan tried.  "The reasons *to* tell us are obvious -- the more we know, and so on -- but why are you not telling us?" 

"Fine, fine."  With a last sigh, Heliotaney came to the table and pulled up a chair between Zhaan and Renyr.  "Apparently there are some Nebari who aren't very happy about... everyone charging in.  There have been a lot of incidents, so far not very serious." 

"Like what?" Tacer asked, before Zhaan could. 

"Throwing rocks, shooting, this one person who turned up, claimed to represent the Establishment, and tried to order the Royal Sebacean forces off the planet..." 

"Good luck with that," Renyr said.  "I've never been able to so much as kick the Royal Sebaceans out of the dorm shower." 

"Very funny," muttered Miko, who came from the Royal Planet. 

Zhaan rolled her eyes at both of them.  Men!  But still--  "One person, I assume they laughed at him and chased him away?" 

"More or less."  Heliotaney flipped back a lock of curly hair.  "That was the strange one.  There's been more shooting and throwing rocks." 

Renyr frowned.  "I don't think we've been so much as shouted at." 

Tacer shrugged.  "Yeah, but we come in saying, 'Hi, we're Eleemosynaries, let us give you medical help,' not, 'Hi, we're moving in and taking over.'" 

Heliotaney gave a snort of agreement.  "Which is bad enough coming from Luxans or Kalish or Royal Sebaceans--" 

"Or Interions, there are Interions," Miko interrupted. 

"--but who the *frell* are these Sykaran people?  Has anyone even heard of them before?  Talk about adding insult to injury--" 

"Hey, my sister-in-law's from Sykar," Zhaan objected.  "Uh, sort of my sister-in-law, anyway."  //Depending on whether or not they're married.  Surely Dee would have said something if they officially were...?//  "And of course she's said she's never going back to Sykar..." 

"So what *is* Sykar?" 

"Uh, peaceful farmers, until the Peacekeepers duped them into raising tannot root.  They've been in revolt, off and on, for... oh, most be about thirty cycles now." 

Heliotaney raised her eyebrows.  "And they have the free time to come invade Nebari Prime?" 

Zhaan shrugged.  "I've heard of them, that doesn't mean I know what they're thinking.  Ksenia might have a guess.  Or she might not." 

##### 

_You asked how much control I can exert over the events here.  Since I have no means of enforcement besides my pseudo-constabulary, that is essentially a question of how many people are willing to listen to me.  (I know you can't afford to pull many units out of the Treaty Enforcement Corps right now, Scorpius, but even a squad of ten would be better than nothing.)_  

_Bluntly, I don't know whether anyone here will "listen to me" in the sense of "follow my dictates", because I am concerned that the first time someone does openly ignore such a dictate, I will lose what credibility I have, so I have been holding back.  In the literal sense of "listen", I have had some success with Kalish, Luxans, Ilonics, Hynerians, Royal Sebaceans, Heptars, some of the Sheyang, and the Eleemosynaries.  (That lot is as stubborn as always -- is it a paragraph in the Eleemosynary Code, do you think?)  The Traoists are too secure in their own superiority to pay attention to anyone else; the Zenetans (possibly as many as ten ships of them) are too secure that no one has the resources to stop them.  Several of the *extremely* minor powers -- that is, the ones who wouldn't be called powers at all if they weren't running around here -- seem to be secure that they are being overlooked._  

_More seriously, I am now convinced that remnants of both the Nebari Establishment and the Nebari Resistance are still active, and neither group is interested in a dialogue.  The most urgent question is whether and to what extent both groups are armed, how connected they are to other unaffected survivors, and what they are planning to do._  

##### 

**People!  Some people walked into the glebe control center today.  They saw the smoke from the degrol, um, the degrol barbeque (thanks, Crichton) and hoped.  They were very relieved to find us.  Nobody's out-and-out said so, but they're not Resistance, they're just ordinary people who were doing labor service in the blinear glebe, next to this one.  (Our escaped degrols are probably busy eating up all their blinear at this moment.)  The Transmission -- THE Transmission -- was in the middle of the night for them, so they should have gotten it through the sleep-teachers, but *not* very surprisingly, half the sleep-teachers don't work right.  (When I was in labor service -- frell, I sound like an old crone -- my sleep-teacher didn't do anything but *whine* so much I couldn't get any sleep.)  Most of them got hurt by the affected people in the glebe-dorm, two of them pretty bad.  (And here I was feeling sorry for myself about my arm.)  I wish we had a healer.**  

##### 

> Most geographic features on Nebari Prime were referred to by number or code, and did not have names as such.  This proved to be a source of great frustration to the various occupying groups, as translator microbes didn't render the codes at all, and just left numbers as numbers, not necessarily the most memorable name system.  Thus, the incomers began almost at once to concoct their own names for urban areas, neighborhoods, regions, or even buildings.  One urban area (planetary headquarters for both the Eleemosynaries and Sikozu Shanu) was flooded with some two motras of water thanks to the destruction of a nearby dam; the Hynerian contingent dubbed it New Eblekk, after the partially submerged Hynerian marshlands city.  The Sheyang generally referred to the orbital installation they commandeered as the City of Bones.  To this day, the continents of Nebari Prime are referred to by Kalish expressions translating as "frelling huge", "big", "medium", "another medium", "small", "tiny", and "large tortoise".  The Royal Fleet went through a period of color-coding urban areas to represent what degree of threat they posed; while not as pervasive as the Kalish continent-names, there are still urban areas referred to as "Fuchsia" or "Teal".  (The threat assessment itself was a joke.  They could keep track of how hostile the locals seemed, but the locals might be armed with anything from rotten fruit to explosives; there was no way of knowing.  Still less did they have any idea that, or where, Nebari Prime had functional surface-to-air weapons emplacements.)

##### 

_Scorpius, this will be short.  I've just heard that a Royal Sebacean transport was destroyed by a ground cannon.  I'm not sure of the specifics, but I'm contacting the head of the Royal Fleet's forces here, both to find out exactly what happened and, if possible, keep anyone from doing anything unavoidably stupid._  

##### 

"Yes, but is it art?" Zhaan said under her breath, staring at the... mural?  Giant photo?  The *really big picture* on the wall.  As far as she could tell, it was a captured image of a gajillion smiling, empty-eyed Nebari, kitted up for various jobs and standing in orderly rows.  It was really rather ugly, but also the first thing she'd seen on Nebari Prime that was even in the same galaxy as public art.  //Is it supposed to be inspirational?  It just looks kind of creepy.// 

"Zhaan!" Palad called.  "Head count?" 

"Right!  Sorry!"  She turned back to the actual Nebari on the scene, who were mostly neither smiling nor orderly.  //One, two, three, five... ten... fourteen... sixteen...  How many kids is that?  Three, right.  Total... twenty.  That's all?//  She was constantly being surprised by how few people turned up.  //Maybe they're scared off by the mural...// 

She sighed and shrugged, and headed towards Palad.  She was halfway there when there was a deafening blast of static from the hadesopter comm. 

"Gahh!" yelled Renyr, who was closest.  "Coming, frell it!"  He dove into the vehicle.  A few microts later, he stuck his head out.  "Palad, Tash wants you right now." 

"Just a--" 

"She says *right* now." 

"Fine."  Palad handed her suturer to Zhaan.  "Take care of this, would you?" 

Zhaan obediently took over with the patient, though she snuck looks at the hadesopter.  What could be so urgent?  She'd just finished with the sutures -- Palad had been almost done -- when Palad herself got out of the hadesopter. 

"Everyone!" she yelled.  "We need to leave this urban area as quickly as possible.  I would recommend that *everyone* try to find some sort of vehicle and leave, *now*.  This is a matter of life and death." 

//What the *frell*?// Zhaan thought, unable to restrain a gape.  But she'd had enough experience with life and death situations to make it a brief gape, and then she started throwing supplies back in their crates. 

"No, leave those, they're replaceable," Palad said.  "We'll want the space to try to fit some of the patients in.  Jettison the cargo!" 

Replaceable, true enough, but...  //Why do we need to get out of the city?  What's happening?//  But again, she put it out of her mind, and focused on getting as many of the Nebari as possible into the hadesopter. 

In the end, with every last crate of supplies dumped and Palad, Zhaan, an orderly, and a nosy adolescent Nebari crammed up in the control cabin with the pilot, they managed to fit fourteen of the local Nebari in with them in the hadesopter -- and since the other six had taken off, they didn't need to leave anyone behind.  Which was good.  Because both Palad and the pilot were *definitely* not happy. 

"What's going on?" Zhaan ventured as they lifted off.  They seemed very wobbly -- hopefully they hadn't exceeded the hadesopter's *mass* capacity. 

Palad looked grim.  "I'm not sure exactly what's happened," she said, very softly.  "But Tash received a warning that the Royal Sebaceans are going to fire on missile-launchers inside this urban area.  From orbit.  They -- whoever talked to Tash -- anticipate that a large fraction of the city will be leveled." 

"Oooohhh, frell."  Reflexively, Zhaan looked over her shoulder, though of course the only thing to see there was the rear wall of the control cabin.  "When?" 

"Soon.  Very soon.  Can we go any faster?" 

The pilot -- another Eleemosynary volunteer --  looked vaguely harassed.  "I'll see what I can do." 

Apparently speeding up in an overloaded hadesopter resulted in pitch control getting even worse.  Zhaan sat down on the floor and hung on to one of the two chairs.  Most of the others followed her example. 

Then there was a brilliant flare of light from behind them.  Zhaan flinched and hung on even tighter as a deafening _FVUM_ followed before the light died.  Then the concussive blast hit. 

//Good thing I wasn't standing,// was her first thought, followed by, //I wonder what the rear compartments look like?// 

Then the hadesopter jerked violently again, and *shook*, and she realized they were making an emergency landing. 

When the movement finally stopped, and got cautiously to her feet and looked out the windshield.  They were in a grain field, and had slid around sideways so they could look back at... what was left of the urban area.  "Well... frell." 

##### 

_The Royal Sebaceans retaliated by destroying most of an urban area.  I'm attempting a positive view.  Either it will intimidate Establishment and Resistance forces into lying low, which would be good, or it will antagonize them into coming out into the open, where we can deal with them.  That's what I'm hoping, at least.  I'm not confident of it._  

_Scorpius, I need some substantive support here.  Right now, if the situation deteriorates into open combat, there is *nothing* I can do about it.  Now that it's come to orbital bombardment, I think it's time for the Eidolons to step in.  Failing that, I need backup.  If whatever is left of the Establishment and the Resistance do pull themselves together to take on outside forces, the situation could get very ugly.  Even if they don't join forces, it could get very ugly -- we have no idea what resources they still have.  The Resistance probably *caused* the Collapse, you know.  And on a strictly personal level, I don't appreciate being right in the middle of it with nothing but local volunteers to assist me._  

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**I've been thinking, about what happened with the Transmission to make everyone go magra-fahrbot in a matter of *microts*.  I wasn't watching it, but some of the others were and didn't notice anything strange.  (And didn't go fahrbot.)  It only affected some of the people who saw it, I guess.  But that's not what's really bugging me.  It's the message I got that morning to "prepare".  No details, just "prepare".  And I can't help thinking that the Establishment wouldn't've wanted to do... this.  And if it wasn't the Establishment...  I'd really like someone to tell me "We didn't do this".  Unfortunately, I'm the best-connected of the lot here, so they're looking to me to tell them "We didn't do this".  We didn't, did we?  It was... the Peacekeepers, or the Scarrans, or somebody.  Draz, I'd rather it was the Luxans did this than the Resistance.  Because we didn't do this.  We couldn't have done this.  Now if I say that enough, maybe I'll be sure of it.**  

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> The exact intentions of the Royal Sebaceans in destroying Urban Area #203 are still debated.  On the one hand, they did indeed destroy the weapons emplacement that had destroyed their transport, protecting themselves from any further threat from that direction.  On the other hand, destruction of an entire urban area in response to one transport smells of retribution and occupation-logic -- frighten the survivors out of any more resistance.  If the latter was the goal, the operation was, as later events would prove, completely unsuccessful.  The destruction of the transport is generally believed to be the work of low-level Establishment personnel who never saw the Transmission.  However, it is possible that it was coordinated by someone who wanted it to intensify hostilities, just as it did.  The destruction of Urban Area #203 was only the opening salvo in the next phase of post-Collapse conditions.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ...to be continued...


End file.
